Scintillation of beams as they propagate long distances through random media limits the performance of imaging and laser projection systems. Adaptive optics are often employed to mitigate the beam fluctuations induced by aberrations in the media. For example, single-conjugate adaptive optics systems detect the wavefront of a beam and drive a wavefront corrector based on the detection to correct fluctuations in the wavefront. Single-conjugate adaptive optics systems, however, are traditionally limited to correcting only the phase component of aberration-induced fluctuations.
Multi-conjugate adaptive optics systems have been developed that use multiple wavefront sensors and wavefront correctors to reduce both phase and amplitude fluctuations in the wavefront of a beam. Conventional field conjugation systems using multi-conjugate adaptive optics typically rely on explicit beam shaping to mitigate the errors caused by scintillation of the beam. Accordingly, these systems require direct measurement and feedback control of beam irradiance profiles. In addition, the control algorithms used to correct the wavefront through beam shaping are intensive and complex.